The letter to
Senor Nobody had given explicit enough direction. Clear of all
buildings, he drew rein and took bearings. Here was the stream, the
stump of a burned mill, the mountain-going road, narrower and rougher
than the way of main travel. He followed this road; the horses fell
into a plodding deliberateness of pace. The sunshine streamed warm
around, but there was little human life here to feel its rays. After
a time there came emergence into a bare, houseless, almost treeless
plain or plateau. The narrow, little-traveled road went on upon the
edge of this, but a bridle-path led into and across the bareness.
Alexander followed it. Before him, across the waste, sprang cliffs
with forest at their feet. But the waste was wide, and in the sun they
showed like nothing more than a burnished, distant wall. His path
would turn before he reached them. The plain's name might have been
Solitariness. It lay naked of anything more than small scattered
stones and bushes. There upgrew before him the tree to which he was
bound. A solitary, twisted oak it shot out of the plain, its
protruding roots holding stones in their grasp. Around was shelterless
and bare, but the heightening wall of cliff seemed to be watching.
Alexander rode nearer, dismounted, left Gil with the two horses, and,
the bag of gold in his hand, walked to the tree.
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